Behind the Scenes at My New Book Club

It's just me, alone, reading

It’s almost October, which means my brand new book club starts NEXT WEEK! ICYMI, I am starting my very own subscription over at Books Are Magic HQ. You can still sign up NOW to get my first pick, Heart the Lover by Lily King. It is delicious and profound and wonderful and you will hold it against your body when you finish it. I’ll announce our November pick in a couple of weeks! The books are all proper first editions, and many of them will come SIGNED. (Heart the Lover will be signed, as will November, and December…still working on locking the rest of the authors in our basement.)

Isn’t that just so cute? Shout out to Laura Supnik for making me look like such a serene cartoon.

It occurred to me today that it might be interesting for folks to know HOW I’m picking the books. It’s both fiction and non-fiction, which means it’s pretty much open to…..every adult book published? Overwhelming!

I do most (maybe not most—half?) the adult buying for the store, which means that every season, I meet with my sales reps from Penguin Random House (I meet with three different PRH reps, and there is yet a FOURTH who meets with our manager), Harper Collins and Macmillan, and go through every single title they are publishing and decide whether or not to order it for the store. DRUNK WITH POWER, that’s me. Our reps are wonderful, and they always present me with titles that they think I might want after all, and they tell me what’s really really good, and what’s coming down the pike.

That’s how I start—going through the catalogues and making notes on what’s coming out which month. I am not an organized person and so a Google Doc is the apex of my abilities. I wrote to my favorite editors and publishers and publicists and asked them, too, so I have a lot of emails incoming about upcoming titles people want me to consider. This must be how Reese Witherspoon feels, and Jenna, and Oprah! (I can’t speak to Reese or Oprah, but I know my girl Jenna reads and chooses every single book that she puts her sticker on, and that she is always available via text to talk books.)

But how to narrow it down?!!! There are a few months that started out with four or five or six titles. This spring is STACKED (sob, says the writer publishing a novel on April 7th that you can pretty please preorder here) and there are so many great books coming.

The solution is simple: read and read and read until I find something I know is right. I have never read digitally before but I did buy myself a Kobo so that I can read some of the books before galleys have been made. I still don’t love to read digitally but I do love that there’s a way to do it that doesn’t support The Empire. (PSA— did you know that you can now buy ebooks via Bookshop and support your local bookstore??!! You can!) I’ve also gotten better at putting things down without finishing them, because, girl, there is not enough time in the world.

I have read some fabulous books so far that weren’t quite right. There is more than one great book every month, that is for sure. I am certainly still working it out, the Je Ne Sais Quoi of it all, but here is what I have so far: the books need to be something special. Something you’ll want to go back to, something you’ll want to have on your shelf. Our other fiction subscription is focused on emerging writers, and so this one is not. That doesn’t mean there won’t be writers you haven’t heard of, it just means that I’m also not afraid of choosing heavy hitters! Listen, I just heard about a book that is coming in June and it immediately knocked over everything else I was considering, just like that. I CAN’T WAIT.

Some stats so far, without giving any spoilers for what I’ve chosen.

-One debut novel, though the author has had GREAT success in other genres

-A debut memoir that I personally think should be as huge as Educated

-A pocket-sized book that will be the perfect gift for any woman aged 16-50

-A book about death from a guy who wrote everyone’s favorite book about death

-A sexy, funny book that happens to take place on a cruise ship

So sign on up! And please let me know in the comments what you’d like to see here on Substack—live convos? With authors? Q + As? I want to make it feel as fun and inclusive as possible. I know we’ll be hosting some of the authors at the store, but not all of them, and so I really want to maximize this zone over here.

But if you want more hints, maybe check out Nov. 11 on the Books Are Magic calendar and maybe grab yourself a spot.

<3